Jan Cheripko: Writing His Truth
By Jessica Rae Patton, Associate Editor

Jan Cheripko with his wife, Valray, at their home in Pennsylvania. "What the fiction writer does is take nonfiction and introduce 'what if?'"

His was a childhood right out of the pages of a gritty young adult novel: poverty, alcoholism, the death of one parent and the absence of the other. Jan Cheripko responded to these early traumas as many adolescents of similar circumstances and family patterns do - by turning to alcohol himself at a young age. He was blessed with the opportunity to get and remain sober, and he has not only sourced this family and personal legacy for his inspirational, hard-hitting fiction, but also brings his first-hand experience into his classroom at the Family Foundation School. Jan is the middle school principal and teaches English at this residential program for grades 6-12 at-risk students in Hancock, NY. Teaching K-8 had the privilege of visiting with Jan last fall in both his capacity as an educator at the Family School and at his home in nearby Bethany, PA, where he conducts his second career as an author for children and teens.

An open book. Jan speaks with bracing candor about his childhood, and how it made him the writer and teacher he is today. "Basically, my mother died when I was five. My father was an alcoholic and my sister and I went to live with my aunt, who was not really our aunt at all - she was a friend of the family's and she took us in," he told us. "We never were formally adopted, but I never considered that she wasn't our family. My aunt was an amazing woman. She had to rob Peter to pay Paul, but I never thought of myself as poor."

Jan continued, "There's financial poverty and then there's poverty of hope. To my aunt's great credit, there was never a sense of poverty of hope."

A life-changing detour. Unfortunately, no amount of support at home could prevent Jan's own abuse of alcohol. His first young adult novel, Imitate the Tiger (Boyds Mills Press, 1996), is a closely autobiographical account of his own detour into addiction from his path as a good student and high school athlete. The book portrays a young man using alcohol to allay feelings of disappointment and a sense of emptiness, and so well conveys a teenager's struggle between doing what he believes is right and acting on impulse after impulse without thought to the possible consequences of these actions. The protagonist, Chris Serbo, ultimately agrees to attend an alternative high school for students with a record of drug and alcohol abuse – a school like the one where Jan teaches English and serves as the middle school principal today.

Front porch chat - Jan Cheripko and Teaching K-8's Jessica Rae Patton deep in conversation on Jan's porch.

All in the families. The Family Foundation School is a boarding school for students who have gotten into trouble at home, school and sometimes with the law, and have displayed alcohol- and drug-abusing behavior and/or other behavior problems. These are addressed in a highly structured setting where students live in self-supporting family groups (each family has its own dormitory and dining hall) and maintain a rigorous schedule of academics, work, counseling and spiritual practice. Jan proudly introduced us to students, telling us about their successes and setbacks, and about his great wish as both their teacher and a person in recovery who's been where they are.

On teaching writing. "My goal is to help a kid think, both in and outside of class," Jan said. "I tell them, 'I'm going to use writing and reading as tools to help you think about your life, because you're going to have to make decisions that are going to affect whether or not you end up leading a successful, useful life. You're going to have to get in touch with your emotions and understand them on a deeper level. Reading and writing can help you there.'"

Jan revealed that he doesn't have his students rewrite their essays. He gives thorough corrections to grammar, structure and punctuation, but wants students to implement these changes in their next essay. "I want them to move onto their next thought and the next thought. As they do so, the writing improves," he said. "It doesn't allow the original thought or subject to grow tedious or for the writing process to feel like a chore."

A new career. Jan began his writing career as a journalist, which prepared him well for writing books. "I learned a lot of good techniques in that field - how to write fast, how to edit, how not to identify too personally with one's own words."

He left his newspaper position to work as a personal assistant to then-editor of Highlights magazine and founding publisher of Boyds Mills Press, Kent L. Brown. He was ready to move out of journalism, and the opportunity to meet and work with authors appealed to him.

"A convenient lie." The desire to write his own book wasn't far behind this career change. Jan told us, "When I started working for Highlights, I started to meet authors and read their books, I said to myself, 'I can do that.' Then I had a self-revelation: 'You've got to stop saying that to yourself – either do it, or stop saying that. Because you don't know whether you can do it, so it's a convenient lie, but you don't know if it's true.'"

The author talks about his book Brother Bartholomew and the Apple Grove (Boyds Mills Press, 2004).

His first children's book, Voices of the River: Adventures on the Delaware (Boyds Mills Press, 1996) is a photo journal chronicling a 215-mile-long, 10-day canoe trip down the Delaware River with the 14-year-old son of family friends.

His second nonfiction book involved another young person – his daughter, Julia. He wrote Get Ready to Play Tee Ball (Boyds Mills Press, 1999) because "I discovered there were no books about tee ball when my daughter was playing the sport, so I decided to write one."

Sports as metaphor. Sports are a predominant theme throughout Jan's books. As explored in Imitate the Tiger, the rules and structures in football act as a contrast to the protagonist's otherwise chaotic existence. In Rat, (Boyds Mills Press, 2002), 15-year-old Jeremy's passion is basketball, but a permanently injured arm prevents him from playing on the team. Already an "outsider," Jeremy faces the wrath of players angered when he discloses a secret about the team's coach. The team serves as a metaphor for society at-large, both in its potential to ostracize someone perceived as different or willing to speak an unpopular truth, and in the power of transformation of a group's consciousness through education.

What's to come. Jan has three novels in the works. One is finished, but he's embarking on a rewrite. "It's a very dark novel. I've got to rework the main character to be at least halfway likeable. I'm not at all interested in writing a book that's going to leave a kid hopeless. My students already know about hopelessness. Writing about evil in the world is not hard. Writing about redemption and hope and duty - that takes talent. Not even talent; it takes work."

In Jan Cheripko's case, both his great talent and work ethic guarantee his readers many fine stories – with no poverty of hope – to come.